[westajay]

Buy the CD, install it on an old machine and play with it over a weekend. OpenBSD has some unique and fantastic features.. everything from PF (its firewall) to spamd (Spam trapping daemon).

It's also nice to use a finely crafted piece of software that doesn't feel like it has been bolted together haphazardly (like your typical Linux distro).

[rbanffy]

I am somewhat offended by that. I run Ubuntu on my really serious computers and I hardly feel it was haphazardly bolted together.

[thaumaturgy]

I wouldn't take it personally. Ubuntu made a specific effort to improve the Linux end-user experience, and they've pretty much succeeded. In the process, their rapid rise to popularity has pushed a bunch of the other distributions into making their systems more homogenized, so Linux has really gotten a lot better for the end-user in the last decade.

That said, OpenBSD is probably the most organized project out of all open source projects close to the same size and scope. They release like clockwork, they do not (or try not to) rush new features out just so they can make the next release, and there really is an uncompromising drive for perfection.

I would love to contribute code to the project, but I have to be honest: though I'm by no means a slouch programmer, those guys seriously outclass me, and I'd be completely out-of-my-league.

Having perused bits of Linux source from time to time, I don't feel that's so much the case outside of OpenBSD.

[silentbicycle]

You can also contribute by donating, buying CDs, porting (or helping to test ports), answering questions on the mailing lists or IRC, etc.

http://openbsd.org/faq/faq1.html#Support